Author Archives: Monica L. Mercado

Greenfield on the Road: Fall 2015

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Students Take a Drive, ca. 1940s, Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections via collegewomen.org.

Students Take a Drive, ca. 1940s, Mount Holyoke Archives and Special Collections via our new archives portal, collegewomen.org.

With the Fall semester underway, I’ve been scheduling travels to share our work with digital women’s history and women’s education archives with colleagues around North America, and right here on Bryn Mawr’s campus. If you’re attending one of the following events, do introduce yourself – it’s a pleasure to share our collaborative work in women’s education history with new colleagues and old friends. [Unfortunately, my rental car doesn’t look half as snazzy as the one Mount Holyoke students took for a spin on collegewomen.org!]

September 19, 2015 | UNYWHO (Upstate NY Women’s History Organization)
“Digital Histories of Women: Projects and Possibilities”
Geneva, NY

September 30, 2015 | Bryn Mawr College Pensby Center Diversity Conversations
“Black at Bryn Mawr: What’s Next?”
Bryn Mawr, PA

October 27, 2015 | DLF Forum
“College Women: A Collaborative Cross-Institutional Archives Portal” (co-presenting with Rachel Appel and Joanna DiPasquale)
Vancouver, British Columbia

January 9, 2016 | American Historical Association Annual Meeting
“Archives Praxis: Supporting Independent Study and Experiential Learning in Special Collections” as part of the panel Teaching History Through Archives.
Atlanta, GA

In the meantime, you can also find me walking campus as part of the Black at Bryn Mawr project, which has two upcoming public walking tours: Saturday, October 3 at 2:30 pm (as part of Bryn Mawr College alumnae volunteer summit) and Friday, October 23 at 2:00pm (as part of Bryn Mawr College Family Weekend). These tours meet in front of Thomas, rain or shine, and all are welcome. Spring 2016 tours, including one during Reunion weekend, will be listed on the website when they are scheduled, so stay tuned!

College Women: A Collaborative Cross-Institutional Archives Portal

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Bryn Mawr College archery team, undated, via collegewomen.org.

Bryn Mawr College archery team, undated, via collegewomen.org.

In June, we announced the launch of College Women: Documenting the History of Women in Higher Education (collegewomen.org), a project of the seven institutions once known as the “Seven Sisters” colleges. With a one-year Foundations planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we developed an archives portal that brings together–for the first time online–digitized letters, diaries, scrapbooks and photographs of women who attended the seven partner institutions: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, and Radcliffe (now the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University).

This summer we put the finishing touches on a white paper documenting our collaboration for the NEH Division of Preservation and Access, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources. The white paper joins our application narrative, freely available on the NEH site; both serve as useful documentation for thinking through collaboration across multiple institutions. The white paper, in particular, makes the case for finding ways to collect geographically disparate collections in a vital and sustainable site, and over the long term, using that site to stimulate significant new work in women’s history. But, as we wrote, the project partners also saw a secondary goal of creating an open-source infrastructure and set of procedures that could be adapted by other institutions interested in developing their own subject-based digital collections. Our white paper, its accompanying standards documents, and the site architecture, design and accompanying documentation available through Barnard College’s GitHub, are all readily available for other initiatives interested in pursuing this approach.

To read more, download the “History of Women’s Education Open Access Portal Project” from the Bryn Mawr College repository, here.

College women beta site 6-11

Our work on this project is ongoing and collaborative. College Women is currently available in a beta version, featuring 300 photographs, letters, diaries and scrapbooks from the seven partner institutions. As more of our historical documents are digitized and catalogued, we plan to expand the content of the site, and continue to write new grants towards these goals.

DLF

Going to DLF? College Women project team members Rachel Appel (Bryn Mawr College), Monica Mercado (Bryn Mawr College), and Joanna DiPasquale (Vassar College) will discuss the collaboration as part of the program on Tuesday, October 27.

We continue to welcome feedback on the site, in the comments below, and through a form on the College Women homepage.

“I never knew what I might find in the boxes”: Temple University student David Polanco on Archives and Teaching

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This blog post has been written by David Polanco, one of two Temple University students who discovered Bryn Mawr Special Collections last Fall as part of the Greenfield Digital Center’s third year participating in the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative organized by Greenfield Digital Center Advisory Board member and Temple University historian Christine Woyshner. David spent his semester researching the history of women’s sports and women’s colleges — a topic of continuing relevance to both students and the general public.

David Polanco looks through the 1905 Bryn Mawr yearbook (photo by Monica Mercado)

David Polanco looks through the 1905 Bryn Mawr yearbook (photo by Monica Mercado)

My field experience at Bryn Mawr College Special Collections was a great one. They manage extensive collections of art, artifacts, rare books, manuscripts, and photographs, and also have a wide-ranging digital archive on the history of women’s education, and resource guides. The Greenfield Digital Center’s online gateway has digital primary resources, instructional activities, and opportunities for teachers and students.

One of the reasons why Bryn Mawr was my top choice [for the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative placement] was because of the chance to learn more about women’s education. Women’s history usually gets lost in the shuffle when teachers teach U.S. History classes. Women are a huge part of the fabric of American history and Bryn Mawr College is a great resource. Continue reading →

Seven Sisters Partners Launch New Archives Project

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With the support of a one-year Foundations planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the seven women’s colleges once known as the “Seven Sisters” launch College Women: Documenting the History of Women in Higher Education (www.collegewomen.org).

College women beta site 6-11

College Women brings together—for the first time online—digitized letters, diaries, scrapbooks and photographs of women who attended the seven partner institutions: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, and Radcliffe (now the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University). These seven colleges, historically regarded as the equivalent of the Ivy League before those schools admitted women, have long stood at the forefront of women’s higher education in the United States, educating many of the most ambitious, socially conscious, and intellectually curious women in the country. As they were exposed to the novel academic and social landscapes of college life, many of these women actively chronicled their student experiences and ambitions through extensive letter writing, diary-keeping, scrapbooking, and photography. Their materials, which document a new era of women’s campus cultures, have been preserved in the libraries of the seven schools and serve as a rich resource for understanding a wide range of issues in women’s history and beyond. College Women makes these treasures available online and searchable together for the first time, enabling researchers to consider student materials in a larger context of movements for women’s education and expanded opportunities for women in American society.

College Women is currently available in a beta version, featuring 300 photographs, letters, diaries and scrapbooks from the seven partner institutions. The institutions will be expanding the content in the coming years as more historical documents are digitized and catalogued. This innovative project also demonstrates the potential for creating new research opportunities for students and scholars when institutions collaborate on building digital collections. Continue reading →

Women’s History in the Digital World 2015

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It seems unbelievable to me that just two weeks ago, many of us were sitting together in Bryn Mawr’s Thomas Library for the second Women’s History in the Digital World conference. As the conference organizer, I watched May 21 and 22 rush by in a blur of nametags, registration lists, sign-making (did anyone not get lost in Thomas?), and friends and colleagues, old and new.

With close to 4,000 #WHDigWrld15 tweets to look back on — we’re a prolific bunch, we women’s historians — I’ve since been able to catch up on your conversations from nearly every one of the nineteen concurrent sessions, the keynote address, and the digital showcase. The ideas presented here were in a word, extraordinary.

WHDigWrld15 keynote audience

Photograph by Kate McCann for Bryn Mawr College Communications.

For those of you who attended the 2015 conference, Greenfield Assistant Director Evan McGonagill and I are hoping to use some momentum to look ahead at how we might continue to serve as a venue for supporting research, and we’d be grateful for any feedback you’d like to share. Our conference survey is open for another week–thanks again to those of you who have already shared your thoughts:

Unable to attend the conference? The video from Claire Bond Potter’s keynote is now available to stream online, and we thank Claire for agreeing to share her talk with a wider audience:

Claire Bond Potter keynote address.

Keynote address (May 21, 2015). Photograph by Kate McCann for Bryn Mawr College Communications.

As Claire noted during her talk, we need to discuss our failures just as much as we promote our successes, and here’s one of mine: just last night, with all those wonderful #WHDigWrld15 live-tweets, I managed to crash the Greenfield Center’s Storify account!

Hungry for more? Back in 2013 Michelle Moravec created a Storify for the first conference–still worth a read, along with selected tweets from this year:

Additionally, as you will see if you click on the keynote video link, we are beginning to update Bryn Mawr’s open access repository with materials from the 2015 conference. We are uploading the abstracts you proposed to us, as promised; if you would like to upload your conference presentation (text and/or slides), and any other materials related to the work you discussed, please send them to us at greenfieldhwe@brynmawr.edu. By sending us your files, the conference archive then becomes fully searchable by keywords and names, giving us another way of preserving some of our conversations. Every month since the 2013 Women’s History in the Digital World conference, we receive data that shows, on average, between 30-60 downloads of presenter resources from this site — the benefit of making your research open.

Other participants and presenters have blogged about the conference:

Do you have thoughts to share on your #WHDigWrld15 experience? Leave a comment below!

#WHDigWrld15 Conference Updates

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conf flyerPreparations are in full swing for Women’s History in the Digital World 2015, the second conference of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education, which takes place this Thursday and Friday, May 21-22, at Bryn Mawr College. We are delighted to welcome more than 130 conference participants to campus later this week–including a number of presenters who joined us for the inaugural conference in 2013.

Over two days, conference panels will take us from Medieval Europe to the postwar Middle East to the twenty-first century women’s college campus, and many points in between. To frame our work in feminist studies, we are pleased to be joined by historian Claire Bond Potter, Professor of History and Co-Director of the Humanities Action Lab at The New School. Her Thursday afternoon keynote, “Putting the Humanities in Action: Why We Are All Digital Humanists, and Why That Needs to Be a Feminist Project” builds on our shared interests in bridging fields. Barring technical difficulties, we are especially excited to be able to livestream the keynote address, scheduled for 4:30-5:30pm EST on Thursday. The keynote can be accessed at this link. Continue reading →

Black at Bryn Mawr: The Walking Tour

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Poster by Grace Pusey.

Poster by Grace Pusey. 

The Greenfield Digital Center has been proud to support the work of Praxis III independent study students Emma Kioko ’15 and Grace Pusey ’15, whose semester-long project Black at Bryn Mawr includes a new walking tour of campus featuring their research. In February, Grace shared the origins of the project with readers, and since that time, they have presented their work-in-progress at Bryn Mawr’s Community Learning Day in March and at the Telling Untold Histories unconference earlier this month.

Emma and Grace will debut their walking tour on campus the week of April 21. For more details, see their blog, Black at Bryn Mawr. The project will also be featured at the final Friday Finds event of the semester, this Friday, April 24 from 4-5pm in Canaday 205 (Special Collections Seminar Room).

In May, Grace will debut the project’s digital component, a map of campus built on Google Open Tour Builder, at Women’s History in the Digital World 2015. Future project-related events will be featured on the Black at Bryn Mawr site.

 

Special Collections and “Workable Lessons”: Temple University student Matt Cahill explores Bryn Mawr history

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Today’s guest blogger, Temple University student Matt Cahill, reflects on his experiences doing research at Bryn Mawr Special Collections as part of the Cultural Fieldwork Initiative organized by Greenfield Digital Center Advisory Board member and Temple University historian Christine Woyshner. We wish Matt well as he completes his studies and student teaching later this year!

Matt Cahill in Bryn Mawr Special Collections, November 2014

Matt Cahill in Bryn Mawr Special Collections, November 2014 (photo by Monica Mercado)

Prior to this experience, I did not have much experience working in cultural institutions, beyond doing outdoor maintenance for a historic property in Haverford Township. As a result, I was excited that I was going to be spending time during my Fall semester at Bryn Mawr College Special Collections!

Since Bryn Mawr is one of the oldest women’s colleges in the country, they have a vast collection of artifacts, documents, and photos relating to the College and women’s history. I was surprised how many people entered Special Collections just to look at the archives! For example, when I attended a Personal Digital Archiving Day workshop, members of the Bryn Mawr College fencing team came wondering how they can preserve their history for future generations to study. There were also scholars from as far as England who spent time in the Special Collections reading room. Since I live by the College, I take it for granted.

I thought only very large museums and institutions [maintained] special collections. However, I realized that no matter the size of the institution, it is important to maintain collections because they provide a lens for understanding larger events or phenomena.

Photo by Matt Cahill.

On Bryn Mawr’s campus (photo by Matt Cahill)

The best example of this was on my very first day, as I was finding my way to campus. At the entrance of the College’s guest parking lot, there is a historic marker about President Woodrow Wilson. Reading the marker, I found out that Wilson was the first history professor at the College in the 1880s. I lived nearby for years and never knew this! So when I started looking through Bryn Mawr Special Collections, I went straight to the collections of faculty papers. Some of the files I read included syllabi from Wilson’s classes and letters he sent. One letter I found was Wilson complaining that teaching women was below him — he did not see the point. I found this extremely interesting because Wilson later became the President about the time of the woman’s suffrage movement. By reading a letter like this, I was saw Wilson’s views of women before he became a national figure.

Continue reading →

Women’s History in the Digital World 2015: Register now!

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Join us at Bryn Mawr College, May 21-22, 2015! Campus photography via Bryn Mawr College Communications.

Join us at Bryn Mawr College, May 21-22, 2015! Campus photography via Bryn Mawr College Communications.

Women’s History in the Digital World 2015, the second conference of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education, will be held on the campus of Bryn Mawr College on May 21-22. We aim to bring together experts, novices, and all those in between to share insights, lessons, and resources for the many projects emerging at the crossroads of history, the digital humanities, and women’s and gender studies.

The conference will open Thursday, May 21 with afternoon sessions and a keynote address, followed by a full day of panels scheduled for Friday, May 22.  Claire Bond Potter, Professor of History and Co-Director of the Humanities Action Lab at The New School for Public Engagement, will give the conference keynote address at 4:30pm on Thursday, entitled “Putting the Humanities In Action: Why We Are All Digital Humanists, and Why That Needs to Be A Feminist Project.”

A draft program for the two days is now available as a PDF [updated 5/7/15]. We are thrilled to host more than seventy presenters, representing projects from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Conference participants are asked to pre-register by Friday, May 1. Continue reading →

Bryn Mawr College Community Learning Day: March 18, 2015

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Cross-posted from LITS blog:

Library & Information Technology Services staff and student employees are excited to participate fully in Bryn Mawr’s first Community Learning Day, scheduled for Wednesday, March 18. A number of the day’s interest sessions have been planned by staff and students associated with LITS. They include:

  • Women of Summer, a screening of the documentary film on the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry and discussion with filmmaker Rita Heller ’59 and Greenfield Center Assistant Director Evan McGonagill
  • Experiences of African American, Latina/o, and Asian American Staff panel, featuring Rod Matthews, Multimedia and Computer Specialist
  • Back Talk: Experience, Challenges & Controversy Working with the Bryn Mawr College African Art Collections, highlighting the new Special Collections exhibit in Canaday, including discussion with exhibition organizers Whitney Lopez, ’15 and Brian Wallace, Curator/Academic Liaison for Art & Artifacts
  • Black at Bryn Mawr: Walking Tour and Archives Project conversation with Emma Kioko ’15, Grace Pusey ’15, and Greenfield Center Director Monica Mercado, who are working to share stories of Bryn Mawr’s history of race and racism
  • Building Institutional Memory workshop, featuring Charlie Bruce ’16 and Rachel Appel, Digital Collections Librarian

These and all of the day’s events are designed to welcome a wide range of participants to learn together. The website will be updated with descriptions for all the interest sessions in the coming week, and you can follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #Mawr2learn. We’ll be tweeting from @BrynMawrLITS and @GreenfieldHWE.

All three libraries will be open, and event programming is scheduled for Carpenter and Canaday.  We look forward to learning with you!

For more information and a schedule for the day, including a link to preregistration: https://www.brynmawr.edu/community-learning